


for all that is sacred

by paracyane



Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene, Reunions, occurs between night 314 and 325
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 08:32:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13267638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paracyane/pseuds/paracyane





	for all that is sacred

It takes Hakuryuu a couple of days, but eventually he finds him, somewhere in the plains scattered across the far east of the continent. It’s been raining, and Hakuryuu would try to make something with Zagan’s magic in an attempt to keep himself dry, but Judal isn’t making any sort of effort. The rain streaks down his face and neck as he stands at the edge of a small cliff overlooking a valley.

“Took you long enough,” he says, and he doesn’t sound grateful at all that Hakuryuu just travelled across the country to see him. Typical. “I was starting to think I was going to have to go back to Rakushou just to see you.”

Hakuryuu wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. It does nothing to prevent the water from getting into his eyes. “Where are we?”

Judal points downward. “See that burnt little clump of wood?” Hakuryuu doesn’t, but he nods. “That’s where I was born.”

Hakuryuu would laugh, if he could. “So even you were a baby once?”

“Shut up,” Judal retorts, but there’s no bite. Even though Hakuryuu hasn’t seen him in years, he already knows that he has never seen Judal’s face like this.

After a pause, Judal sits, his legs hanging off the edge. Hakuryuu follows suit, and waits until it’s clear that Judal doesn’t have any more to say. But then he looks sideways at Hakuryuu, mouth slanted down, his eyes inexplicably heartwrenching. “So you got your legs back?”

Hakuryuu holds up his arm so Judal can see that, too. “Kouen’s.” Judal makes a noise of understanding in his throat, turning back to look over at the remains of the burned village. “Sometimes they don’t feel like my own.”

“Why’s that?”

“They’re not burned like my old legs.” Hakuryuu absently presses a palm into his thigh right above the knee. “I used to have a big one down the left.”

“I know,” Judal says, like a reflex he can’t control. Then he swallows and curls his fingers into the dirt. “I remember.”

Hakuryuu remembers too, the winter when they were thirteen and fifteen and Judal had nearly waltzed into Hakuryuu’s room in the middle of the night and insisted on warming his feet on Hakuryuu’s legs. It’d taken Hakuryuu a good while to get used to the ice blocks Judal called his feet, but he’d done it. When he woke up, Judal was splayed out next to him, his arm across the pillows, Hakuryuu curled into a ball underneath.

“I figured,” he says now, tightening his grip on his polearm, just so he had something to hold. It wasn’t something Hakuryuu forgot either, perhaps for different reasons. Or the same, he could never ask to confirm for himself.

Eventually the rain starts to lighten up, so Hakuryuu can see the valley beneath them more clearly. He can start to make out where Judal was pointing. There really isn’t much left of the village; there isn’t a part of it that looks habitable, even after twenty some years.

“I knew you were going to come back,” Hakuryuu says into the silence. For a second he thinks Judal is sleeping he’s so quiet, but when he turns to look at him, Judal meets his eyes. “I always knew.”

“I hope you still held a funeral for me though.”

Hakuryuu cracks a smile. “I did.”

“I wish I could’ve been there,” Judal says, in a tone that Hakuryuu could only describe as wistful. “I would’ve had such a good time.”

“If you’d been there, we wouldn’t have had to hold a funeral in the first place,” Hakuryuu points out.

Judal leans back, pressing his hands into the ground as he looks up at the rapidly clearing storm and sighing. “That’s what I was trying to say.”

That’s what Hakuryuu would’ve preferred too, but it had been their mess to clean up, the fights that they had started for their own reasons. Looking back, Hakuryuu isn’t sure how selfish he should feel as much as disappointed, as angry.

He’s sure Judal doesn’t know either. There’s no way. He follows Judal’s line of sight towards the top of the mountains, blinking the clouds out of his eyes.

“What’s wrong, Ha-ku-ryuu,” Judal lilts, a familiar beginning of a smile on the corner of his mouth. “Are you crying again? I think Hakuei is a little far for me to fetch.”

Hakuryuu tries to laugh, but whatever sound he forces out of his diaphragm chokes in his throat, on the back of his tongue. “I hated it when you did that.”

“What, get Hakuei when you were crying?” Judal shakes his hair out of his eyes. “What else was I supposed to do?”

But before his brothers died, his mother was by default the one who would hold him until his cheeks were dry, because Hakuryuu had always hated crying in front of his sister. Judal, at least, let him do it without interruption.

“You used to stop crying if I let you brush my hair,” Judal recalls, and then he actually does smile. “It took me forever to get it tied up again.”

“I helped!” It’s true, brushing Judal’s hair calmed him down, especially because it was such a repetitive task that spanned a remarkably long period of time.

“You didn’t once because you left to spar with Hakuei’s brat,” Judal accuses.

Hakuryuu thinks back. Maybe there had been a time he left Judal alone to go play with Seishun. “One time?”

“Multiple times,” Judal corrects. He reaches back to squeeze the water out of his hair. He spins his wand around a couple times to produce enough wind to dry the remaining moisture. “You broke my heart.”

“I’m sure I did,” Hakuryuu says flatly. Judal flicks his wrist so a little tornado spins its way around Hakuryuu, drying his clothes. He adjusts his sleeves, pulling them down lower near his wrists. “Thanks.”

“Thanks for coming to see me,” Judal says easily, as he’s finishing drying the rest of his own clothes. “I thought I was going to have to do this by myself.”

Hakuryuu watches the dirt crumble away from the cliff and fall down into the nothingness. “No,” he says. He thinks about how his mother would laugh as Hakuren would lift him up on his shoulders. Hakuyuu would protest, because once Hakuryuu hit his head on a doorway, but it was spring and they were outside, so there was no immediate danger. “No one should have to do this by themself.”

Judal scoffs. “I guess that makes me lucky to have you.” He’s still looking at the burned wood, his home. The home that he never knew, and will never know.

Belatedly, Hakuryuu says, “I’m sorry.”

Judal snorts, pushing his hair away from his face as he dries it. “Don’t be. How can I miss something I don’t even remember?”

“But you do remember.” 

Judal scowls, but it’s not the expression he normally makes. It’s too dark, even for him. “Only because that Aladdin showed me. It’s not even my memory.” 

Hakuryuu looks down at his hands, opening and closing them to ground himself. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” he says, “to miss a parent you never had.” When Judal stops what he’s doing to look at him, Hakuryuu adds, “I understand.” 

Judal sighs, twirling his wand with his fingers. “I guess you do.” There’s dirt under his nails and a streak of it on his forehead. Hakuryuu is suddenly overcome with a sadness he can’t explain, a longing that isn’t his own. Judal looks the way he feels, as they’re making their way down the charred ruins, and Hakuryuu finds that he doesn’t have anything left to say; thinks he’s above ever asking the one person who’s ever truly known him, for an answer they both already have. 

 


End file.
